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Photograph: Courtesy Graham MacIndoe

The best fall concerts in NYC

Get over your post-summer woes and get ready for a busy fall season, with shows from arena heavy hitters to indie gems

Written by
Andrew Frisicano
&
Ro Samarth
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We love fall for plenty of reasons: sweater weather, gorgeous foliage, fewer children running amok. But our favorite part about the season is the insane number of shows that come through town. Concerts in NYC this fall feature some promising outdoor concerts, including plenty of the top indie-rock bands and hip-hop artists. Check out our list of not-to-miss concerts below.

RECOMMENDED: See our guide to concerts in NYC

Best fall concerts in NYC

Explosions in the Sky
  • Music

Perhaps the most joyous of the post-rock instrumentalists, Explosions in the Sky write silvery guitar symphonies that steadily tiptoe through a series of elaborate crescendos toward shivering climax. Here the band touches down for its 20th anniversary celebration tour. Expect some songs from EITS’s 2016 release, The Wilderness, (their first since 2011), which features nine tracks that morph from jittery love sonnets to furious dirges and back.

  • Music
  • Folk, country and blues

Young country star Kacey Musgraves mixes a classic, honeyed sound with a subversive lyrical take on the traditionally straitlaced genre. Last year's album, Golden Hour, a cover-to-cover collection of heartrending hits, remains one of the most masterful country releases in recent memory.

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  • Music
  • Pop

This bubblegummy singer has come far since the viral popularity of 2012's "I Love It"—seven mixtapes and full-lengths, as well as several collabs with the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen, PC Music and Troye Sivan, to be exact. Refining her signature raucous, aggressive dance-club edge, new anthems "1999" and "Gone" demonstrate a wholly different songwriting maturity. Hence, a new album title to represent the full actualization: Charli. Catch the songs off the brand new eponymous third studio release here at this T5 gig.

  • Music
  • Rock and indie

A mysteriously unmarked 7" (containing a heretofore unknown song) in Sleater-Kinney's 2014 career-spanning box set was all it took to get the blogosphere buzzing with reunion rumors, and days later, it was official: The band was back, soon after releasing their first LP in a decade, No Cities to Love. This year the riot grrrl torchbearers and indie-rock luminaries touch down in support of another admirably toothsome, no-fuss comeback release, The Center Cannot Hold.

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  • Music
  • Punk and metal

Call us nitpickers if you must, but it's hard for us to think of this heavy metal institution the same way in light of guitarist Jeff Hanneman's tragic passing and the formal sacking of drum titan Dave Lombardo in recent years. That said, this is your last chance to catch Slayer's bone-chilling warp-speed thrash, as the band touches down in support of the last leg of its farewell tour, "The Last Campaign," alongside funk-metal freaks Primus. Since even the thirteenth studio album promised to be released before the oncoming disbandment looks to be dead in the water—slain, if you will—cue up 2015's Repentless, throw up the horns, and come out to say au revoir to the dark gods of metal.

  • Music
  • Rap, hip-hop and R&B

The L.A. rap crew visits NYC to celebrate its new fifth studio-album, Ginger, which according to founder Kevin Abstract, aims for an Outkast "Hey Ya"-esque energy in its young adult explorations of contemporary angst, anxiety and depression. Wherever the young collective draws inspiration for its wide-ranging taste and infectious energy, you can expect razor-sharp hooks and vividly resonant drama.

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